


Worlds Can Be Saved Without It

by athenaiskarthagonensis



Category: Good Omens (TV)
Genre: Feelings, M/M, not quite angst but gently
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-01
Updated: 2019-07-01
Packaged: 2020-06-02 11:19:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,325
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19440403
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/athenaiskarthagonensis/pseuds/athenaiskarthagonensis
Summary: Aziraphale and Crowley have a little discussion about swords, and the relinquishing of them, too. Maybe it's not such a bad thing to be soft.





	Worlds Can Be Saved Without It

**Author's Note:**

> I really can’t stop thinking about Aziraphale, and his past, and what he nevertheless chose to be. He fought in the war, he had a flaming sword – someone, at some point, must have thought he could wield it. And yet he has crafted himself into a persona which is so very different from that of any other angel we see. They are Good, but he is good – he is soft and gentle (though still a bit of a bastard) where they are fierce and unyielding and certain of their own rectitude. But at the end, he tried to fire that gun, and he picked up that sword….

“When you picked up that sword,” Crowley said, and the comfortable silence shattered. Little glittering shards of it went bouncing across the comfortably worn old Oriental carpets and settled into the upholstery, waiting, just like glass, to cut the unwary.

Aziraphale’s fingers tightened ever so slightly on the winged handle of his mug and then, with great care, he set it down upon a slightly tarnished silver coaster. “Yes?” he prompted, when it seemed as though Crowley was not going to speak again. Best to.. get it all out of the way, Aziraphale thought a little helplessly. He had, after all, seen the look on Crowley’s face when he had scooped up the sword from the tarmac; he had known that this was coming.

“When you picked up that sword,” Crowley said again, “I thought... well, I thought you were going to....”

“Use it?” Aziraphale interjected, and Crowley was silent, just looking at him. He didn’t bother with the glasses, when it was just the two of them. He didn’t bother with blinking, either, and though a human might have found the intent snaky gaze quite unnerving, Aziraphale did not. _Usually_ , anyway. He glanced away, and then back again, and then down at his hands, which were soft and uncallused, though stained just a bit with ink. His fountain pen leaked, but he’d owned it for nearly eighty years and was quite attached.

“Well, yeah,” Crowley said after a moment, almost carefully instead of with his usual manic energy. Aziraphale’s lips twitched very slightly, rather like he’d been struck but was trying not to show it hurt.

“I wouldn’t have,” he said. His eyes darted up. “Crowley, I... how could you think that? After six thousand years? I’d never... you’re my best friend!” he burst.

The broken silence, glittering in its shards, rose up again in a sort of threat... and then Crowley blinked, just once. “Wait. _You_ think that _I’d_ think that _you’d_...?”

“Well... yes,” Aziraphale answered helplessly. “I mean, hereditary enemies, all that... and we _were_ on opposite sides in the first one.” Which meant, of course, he could so very easily have found himself facing Crowley on that field of battle. Only he’d not have _known_ Crowley then. He’d not have... had any reason to hesitate at all.

“Bloody heaven, ‘Ziraphale, it’s been six thousand years!” Crowley said, leaning forward out of his normal boneless slouch. “Nooo, that wasn’t what I thought at all. I never thought you’d use it _on me_. I was afraid you’d use it _on them_ , all of...” He flapped his hands like a man swatting at invisible gnats, contriving to indicate all the massed forces of heaven and hell. “... _them_... y’know, all the occult forces. And, er, wossname, _ethereal_ ones.”

“...oh!” Aziraphale answered after a surprised moment. “Oh. Well. Yes, I would have, if I’d had to.”

“I know,” Crowley said. “I mean, I _never_ thought you’d actually try to kill the kid.” And maybe it had been more than a bit hypocritical of him, not to mention selfish to try to insist, but he hadn’t wanted to do it _himself_ , either. And, well, demon. Being a selfish hypocrite was in the job description. “But you did. Once I saw that, I knew you’d use that sword. You’d feel absolutely pants about it, but you would have done.”

Aziraphale was silent, looking again at the soft plumpness of his hands, at their perfectly manicured nails. The ink just at the first joint of his index finger was the deep celestial blue he favored; it had spread into the little fine lines of his skin, wicking through them and feathering pale. He nodded, once. “I would have done, yes.”

“Right,” Crowley said. “Which is why _I_ had to prevent it. Can’t have you going and undoing six thousand years of work all in one moment, can I?”

The angel, who was not himself a snake, nor any sort of reptile at all, blinked quite rapidly as he looked up. “Whatever do you mean?”

“Look, you gave that sword _away_ , right?” Crowley said, leaning in a little further. His entire torso swayed a little, loose and sinuous, as though he had too many bones, or perhaps not enough. “You made a choice. Probably, and I don’t think I’m reaching too far here, _probably_ the first _real_ choice you’d ever made.”

The demon’s lips curled up, very slightly, at their corners. Crowley almost never smiled very broadly, Aziraphale had noticed; he’d come to cherish the few times he’d seen it, when true mirth or happiness entirely transformed those sharp features into something rather softer.

“They _needed_ that sword,” Aziraphale said, as he had said to himself so very many times over the centuries that it had taken on the feeling of something rehearsed, known by rote. “There were animals. It was going to be cold when night fell. I only thought....”

“Oh, don’t go trying to fool me with _that_ story again, ‘Ziraphale!” Crowley interrupted, waggling his fingers madly. “Maybe you _thought_ that’s why, and maybe it even _was_ , at least a little. But you’re not fooling me. You had that sword in the war, didn’t you? And then _She_ let you keep it when She told you to guard the gate.”

He seemed to expect an answer, so after a moment Aziraphale nodded. “That’s right,” he said primly, folding his hands together in his lap. His posture, always good, was quite as straight as a ramrod; discomfort did have a way of tightening his spine.

“And then you _gave it away_ ,” Crowley said. “You fought a whole blessed war with the thing and then She set you down and said ‘all right now, Aziraphale, guard this gate with your great flaming sword’ and you, presumably, said 'right enough, will do,’ but at the very first excuse you had, you gave it away.”

“That’s... right,” he said again, a shade more hoarsely.

“That’s when I knew,” Crowley said. “Right there. Right there and then, that’s when I knew you were _different_. That sword was... was... was your _duty_ , it was... it was a symbol, is what. Look, you read, ohhhh, _books_ and things, don’t you?” Aziraphale made an involuntary scoff of sound and, entirely undaunted, Crowley continued, “Sword was a _symbol_ , is what it was. You’d hurt people with that sword before, and then you decided one day, you decided _no, I’m not going to do that, I’m going to **help** them instead_.”

“...I suppose that’s _more or less_...”

“So I couldn't let you go and do it all again, could I?” Crowley finished, sounding far too damnably pleased with himself, even a little triumphant. “Go and ruin all that? First choice you ever made for yourself and you were going to go and unmake it, just like that? After all, you’re the nice one.”

“Well, it _was_ the end of the world,” Aziraphale said after a moment, but he was smiling very gently, almost to himself. “I do think I deserve a bit of leeway there. It isn’t as though we had _very_ many options.”

“...bit dirty pool of you though, that whole ‘never talk to you again’ bit,” Crowley said, sounding rather aggrieved... but when Aziraphale looked up, Crowley was smiling.

“Yes, well, you only needed a bit of proper motivation, didn’t you?” Aziraphale answered, with a genteel little sniff.

“And you thought it’d be you.”

“No,” Aziraphale said, glancing at Crowley a little coyly. “I _knew_ it would.”

“Just enough of a bastard....”

Aziraphale smiled. “I should thank you,” he said. “For... well, for understanding.”

“You don’t have to thank me for _that_. ‘Course I understood, angel,” Crowley answered easily. “Been there once myself, hadn’t I? Oh, not precisely there, but close enough, really. And knowing what those other arseholes are like, it can’t have been easy, choosing to be, well....”

“Soft?” Aziraphale answered, and for once, he didn’t feel a featherweight of shame over it, either.


End file.
